As Two Feet is well and truly underway across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, we thought it was high-time for everyone to meet the entrepreneurs taking part! Each fortnight we’ll be profiling some of the participants in our Meet the Entrepreneurs series.
In our first instalment, we’re chatting to two entrepreneurs working in the ethical food and urban farming spaces. Hayley Dunne is the founder of Little Delish Bakery, a Brisbane-based enterprise that is providing ethical and sustainable catering services to locals with a focus on bringing people together around the conversation of conscious eating.
Geert Hendrix is the founder of Farmwall, an urban farming initiative that will see vertical planters going into restaurants and cafes around Melbourne, bringing the farm-to-plate idea to our doorsteps.
Little Delish Bakery
Little Delish Bakery are working with local farmers and makers to connect their customers to sustainable and organic food in a delicious, fun way. By bringing people together and sharing a meal, the enterprise hopes to support their local growers and encourage their customers to purchase food with care.
Founder, Hayley Dunne says that her passion for local, sustainable food drove her to start Little Delish. Her and her business want to make finding and eating ethically-sourced food as easy as possible, “especially with our lives becoming busier, a lot of people who care about eating ethically simply don’t have the time to source it themselves”. As well as creating awareness about the origins of food in their community, Little Delish also collaborate with farmers to figure out how to create smart, simple ways to access good food.
“In Australia, we have so much beautiful, local produce to enjoy, but often it’s hard to know where your food is really coming from, and what impact it has had on the environment when it was grown” – Hayley Dunne, founder of Little Delish Bakery
We had a chat to Hayley to find out why she does what she does.
What is your intent, and how are you making or plan to make an impact on the challenges that your business is wanting to address?
Little Delish exists to create beautiful, mindful food that brings people together. Our main focus is on connection – of paddock to plate, of farmer to customer and between the people who are enjoying our food. We hope that by bringing people together, we can make people aware of how their food choices are impacting the environment, and their local community. By sharing stories of farmers and makers, we hope that our customers can be more connected to the food that they eat, and continue to make choices that support their community.
Tell us about your business model currently and the changes you have made/are making…what are you products/services?
Little Delish creates breakfast bars and grazing tables, as our focus is very much on sharing our table. We rescue produce that would otherwise end up in landfill and turn it into all kinds of delicious creations – jams, dips, cakes and more. We work with whatever produce is seasonal, so our menus are constantly evolving.
We support our community by using our catering resources to fundraise for charities, and we also offer discounted rates to community organisations. We also collaborate with small growers and makers to help them promote their businesses, with the hope that we can build a community of ethical foodies and farmers that all work together to create more ethical food choices for customers.
This is a recent development for us, and we’re always working towards finding new ways for our business to create impact in our community. We try to stay creative in the ways that we work with charities and community groups, so that we can create change in new ways. Sometimes it’s the little, simple things – like a bake sale – that can have a huge impact.
Where does Two Feet fit into your journey?
Two Feet has been incredible for us in bringing focus to the aspects of our business that work best, and those that need more love. By bringing our intent into focus, we’re able to make better choices about which products and projects are the best fit for us. As a solo entrepreneur, the support of the Two Feet community and the incredible mentors has allowed us to grow in ways I couldn’t imagine before we start. I now have clarity and confidence moving forward, knowing that we are on the right track. Two Feet has been invaluable in guiding our business towards the change that we want to create.
Farmwall
We all often eat in restaurants and cafes that claim to have ethically sourced, fresh ingredients, but how sure are we of this? Farmwall are helping to make our sustainable food consumption a certainty by bringing farm to plate- reducing food miles, pesticide and herbicide usage, reduce energy and water costs, reduce deforestation and other negative environmental effects of present day agriculture. They’re doing this through their vertical farmwalls that will be installed in restaurants and cafes, and urban aquaponic farms built on vacant land, parking lots and rooftops.
Founder, Geert Hendrix and his team (including Dr. Wilson Lennard, a leading commercial aquaponics consultant) are also wanting to fulfil the growing demand of chefs to find enough local, fresh, flavoursome, natural, waste-free and affordable produce for their menus.
“By growing food in the city we’re hoping to have a positive impact on the environment” — Geert Hendrix, founder of Farmwall
What is your intent and how are you making or planning to make an impact on the challenges facing agriculture?
Our intent is to transform our city into a food producing ecosystem that positively impacts our environment while inspiring others to make sustainable change
- Through embracing vertical farming technology and design, we can create an inspiring aesthetic that sparks conversation about urban food production.
- Using chefs as mediators and food as a communication tool—we can transform our food values by encouraging urban, locally grown produce.
- To use aquaponic innovation to repurpose vacant space—turning under-performing land into urban food producing environments.
- Connect urban growing spaces with local community by providing educational tools and resources around healthy, nutritional produce.
Tell us about your business model currently and the changes you have made/are making…what are you products/services?
Although it may seem we are in the business of Aquaponic and Vertical Ag technology, our core business is selling locally grown fresh produce + maintenance and farming services. We operate under a subscription model where monthly produce is guaranteed in return for a fixed monthly fee. We have recently brought our plans for a commercial aquaponic farm forward to a parallel trajectory in the overall pictures.
Where does Two Feet fit into your journey?
Two Feet is an important step in our growing process and the shared knowledge keeps our minds on the right track. We feel confident knowing there are so many talented people on our side to seek mentorship and follow our journey. We hope TDi becomes apart of story in the long run.
We’re loving working with Farmwall and Little Delish Bakery, check out the awesome work that they’re doing below. Tune in soon for the second instalment of Meet the Entrepreneurs!